Reading Survey Responses I Was Low-Key Nervous to Open From Past Clients ✨ 5-Year Anniversary Bonus Episode ✨

WOW Yates Nutrition, LLC has officially been established for 5 years! I AM SO BLESSED.

Seems like a great time to (potentially) roast myself and see what past clients (those who have been on their own after working with me for at least 6 months) have to say about me. I took peeks here and there at what the responses were saying, but this is the first time I'm sitting down after the last wave of responders and seeing the final results.

If you have ever wondered if long term healing is actually possible, what life after Nourished & Free® looks like, and if I actually do help people - stick around and find out.

Transcript

Michelle Yates (00:00)
Hey there, welcome to Nourished and Free, the podcast where mental health meets physical health, food guilt gets ghosted and toxic wellness advice gets roasted. I'm your host, Michelle Yates, registered dietitian, certified health mindset coach and I my master's in health psychology. Around here, we believe that food should be nourishing, health should be all inclusive and mental sanity around food and your body is just non-negotiable.

If you're new here, I would definitely recommend subscribing to this podcast if you're looking for a safe space to understand and heal your relationship with food and with your body. And also figure out why it is that your brain seems to keep self sabotaging you and you want to make it work for you instead of against you. Let's get into it. Today's episode is a fun one. It actually today is the five year anniversary of

Yates Nutrition, LLC. I am very, I don't know if I want to say surprised. I don't know that I'm surprised I made it five years. I think I'm just really feeling a lot of pride. Because I mean, business owners out there will understand that there's just such a grind to having your own business, especially in the first couple of years, I always tell people if I knew how much

work it was going to take to get this thing where it's at today. I don't know that I would have done it, but I'm really glad I did because this work is incredibly rewarding. And it's, mean, the reason I do what I do is because I want to help other women. And so on that note, today I want to do something really special and I want to read my survey results with you of nourished and free graduates. So women that have worked with me inside of my group coaching program, nourished and free.

and I sent the survey out last week to anybody who has been graduated for six months or more. So it's been a hot minute since they worked with us. And this type of data is so fun for me because I love being able to see love slash hate because if it, I'll get to that. I love being able to see if this actually works and if they're actually getting what they came here for and if, you know.

Here's the thing, with the women that I work with, there's usually this long history of dieting and trying thing after thing after thing. And so by the time they get to me, they've lost a lot of hope. They feel really defeated, discouraged. And the last thing that I want to be is just another thing that they end up finishing and are like, wow, I feel really defeated again, because once again, I'm back to square one. And so this process, not only do I want

to make sure that women are getting results while they're working with us. But I always tell people, this is really a foundation. It's not necessarily gonna get you to point A to point B in four months. It's more about laying the foundation for you to get to point Z on your own for the rest of your life. I don't want it to be like, you can only be successful while you're working with us. Instead, I want it to set you up for success in the long run, even on your own. Otherwise, in my opinion, why would I do this?

Why would I do this work if the results don't last? And if women go right back to where they started, you know, like that just feels like I am just another thing. I'm just another scammy sleazy person trying to take people's money. And that's not at all what I want. So this type of survey is really life-giving for me because I want to be sure I want to see that what we do together actually lasts. So I'm going to walk you through.

these survey results and fill you in on what women are saying six plus months after working with us inside of Nourished and Free. Let's get into it.

Michelle Yates (03:54)
what the process looks like of me ⁓ checking in with clients and measuring their progress. Because with most things that are health and wellness oriented, there's usually some element of weight loss involved. For our clients, that's what they're used to, is using the scale to measure their progress. When they work with us,

Especially when it comes to binge eating and disordered eating, we take a weight neutral approach because that's shown in the literature to be the most effective. And I can also just say from clinical and personal experience, it is the most effective when we take the pressure off about losing weight, because that's just stressful. And so we don't measure progress that way. We don't ask women to tell us what they weigh at any point in the process of working with us.

And ⁓ if you're not familiar with how women work with us, I have a program called Nourishment Free. It's a four-month process. I do have a couple other options that are a shorter timeline, but we typically recommend they do the full four-month process because change takes time. And we are going through their relationship with food or examining their body image or digging into the mindset.

and beliefs that they have around themselves and health and especially food. It's a big one. And these things can ultimately be contributing to their disordered relationship with food. So we need to address those things. And it's just so much easier to do that when we're not worried about weight. And we just take that off the table and put it on the back burner. So then how do we measure progress if you're not asking people what they weigh?

One of the ways that I do this is I have women share with us on a scale from one to 10, how they would rate their relationship with food. on a scale from one to 10, I asked them, how would you rate your relationship with food with one being extremely stressful and 10 being stress free?

And I will say this is not a perfect measurement. This is trying to take something very qualitative and make it quantitative. And there's a lot of limitations to that. What somebody describes as stress-free might be different than how somebody else would. ⁓ I mean, I'm even looking at this myself and I'm like, you know what? I don't even know how I would respond to this because I have five as neutral. And neutral, you could say that neutral is stress-free.

It's not perfect, right? These are really imperfect things. And this isn't a validated tool by any means. But it is my best attempt at getting some answers on how women are doing and what their progress looks like. So that's the first question. How would you rate your relationship with food on a scale from one to 10? Similarly, I asked how you would rate your body image on a scale from one to 10. One being I hate my body. Five being I feel neutral about it. And then 10 being I accept it. And

I want to make a distinction there. The reason I didn't put 10 as being I love my body is because personally in the work that I do, I don't think that's a realistic goal. I focus on body neutrality, getting to a place where you're okay with your body and it is what it is and it's not so much I'm obsessed with this and I love all my cellulite and my stretch marks and my rolls and

I never care about what my weight is or how my body looks. Like that's just not realistic. Who lives that way? And what I find is that when we do make that the goal, then women feel like they are not doing good enough if they don't achieve that. And so then that is discouraging for them. And they ultimately don't continue on in the process of doing body image work. And that's obviously not the goal. So when we make neutrality the goal, it's far more achievable.

And it can even be a gateway to getting to a place of feeling more love towards oneself. But it's, ⁓ like I said, it's not the goal.

Then another thing I ask is how many times a week women are binge eating. With this specific survey that I sent out, I am asking these questions. I'm asking them to think about before they started working with us, how they would rate their relationship with food, how would they rate their body image, how many times a week were they binge eating, how many times a week were they overeating, which I'll share more about in a second.

I'm asking these questions in the context of before they started working with us. So before Nourished and Free, how many times a week were you binge eating? Now binge eating is distinct in the sense that it is eating an amount of food that is definitely more than somebody else would in that same circumstance in less than two hours. And there's also a sense of feeling out of control. A lot of people say that they binge eat or they think they binged, but

they're not actually eating an amount of food that is way more than somebody else would in that same circumstance, and they're not feeling out of control. So that wouldn't be a binge. Then we're just overeating at that point, maybe emotionally eating. ⁓ So along those lines, I also ask, how many times a week were you non-binge overeating? So this could be like emotion-related boredom eating. We ate when we didn't need it physically. We knew that it was more than we needed, but we did it anyway.

but there wasn't a feeling of loss of control or going into full binge territory. So with this, I put on the survey for present day when I have women share how many times that's happening a week now. I clarify that it's actually really normal to overeat and that's not something we need to try and completely avoid for the rest of our lives because again, I'm trying to be realistic here. And it's just like...

You're a human, of course you're going to overeat sometimes. Thanksgiving, holidays, things like that, it's just going to happen. So we don't need to feel like we're messing up if we overeat from time to time. Especially emotional eating, sometimes the best thing to lift your mood is going to be having an ice cream cone or having a piece of chocolate. There's nothing else that will make you feel better. I wouldn't say that's bad.

If it's happening all the time and it's your only coping mechanism and you're binge eating, then yeah, we need to address that. anyway, so those are the things that I had my previous clients share with me in terms of trying to get some quantitative data. How many times a week were you binge eating? How many times a week were you non-binge, overeating? How would you rate your body image on a scale from 1 to 10? How would you rate your relationship with food on a scale from 1 to 10?

And so I want them to share with me those numbers before and then now. ⁓ Something I've noticed with our clients is that when they first start working with us, they will typically over report their relationship with food and with their body image and then under report the number. Well, that's not necessarily true. They won't under report the number of times they've been G. But the relationship with food is usually something that after the fact, they're like, you know what?

now I understand how bad it really was. We don't usually see that until it's hindsight. I am enjoying seeing these responses now because I feel like they're more true to the reality. ⁓ Then I also asked our clients on this survey if they completed all of the modules, if they yes, completed all of them. There's 12 core modules associated with Nourished and Free. I have additional modules that are

called the bonus vaults that are in what's called the bonus vault. But those aren't necessarily, they're kind of like, if you relate to this topic, then here's a deep dive into it. Or if you have this specific question, here's a deep dive into that. But it's not part of the core curriculum. So I asked them if they did complete all of the 12 core curriculum modules. The answers that they could have wrote was yes, all of them, most of them, a few of them, or none of them.

And then I asked them if they ever revisit the modules. So for our members that signed up before I created the different tiers of options, they got lifetime access to the modules. And then now our clients who sign up for the all-in option get that lifetime access. So ⁓ yes, I want to know, are we actually going back to them? Are we revisiting? It's interesting to see. And then.

I asked them those same questions about now, relationship with food, body image, how many times a week are you binging and non-binge overeating. I also asked them, have you noticed any changes in your physical health since finishing marriage and free? For example, if your A1C has gone down, you're stronger in the gym, my weight has become healthy for me. Notice that I say healthy for me. And that's really the only time I'm ever asking my clients about their weight. And then.

I ask what kind of takeaways or aha moments did they have from nourished and free? Do they feel like they've been able to apply what they learned into their life? If yes, can they give some examples? If no, please share why they think that is. What are some things they're proud of as an accomplish of or as a result of accomplishing nourished and free? Or I'm sorry, what are some things they are proud of accomplishing as a result of nourished and free? What are some things they notice in their everyday life?

that used to feel impossible or unheard of before nourished and free? So those are the questions that we asked.

Are you ready to see the answers?

Let's get into the results.

I have hidden any names and emails to keep this information private to my beautiful, wonderful clients. And we have got 43 responses, which is awesome. Very excited to go through this. So one of the things that I wanted to see was how many months has it been since

this person who filled out the survey reached out. So if anybody's looking at my screen over here on this left-hand column, it's going to show how many months ago it's been since they stopped working with us. Not since they started, but since they stopped. ⁓ So that's how much time they've had on their own. That's in months. So let's see here. ⁓ I also just want to disclose I did offer a $10 gift card to anybody that completed the survey. I really wanted this data, so.

I was happy to pay them for their time. Some of them though did tell me not to send them a gift card and that was very kind of them. Okay, so what I want to do is I want to look at our averages of that quantitative data. So if we're looking at the average rating of their relationship with food before starting and this is for everybody who responded regardless of how many modules they did or if they still revisit modules.

Their average relationship with food was a two out of 10. Not surprising, that's why they're coming to us in the first place is because they feel like it's terrible. Their relationship with food now, so that could be, mean, if we're looking at months since they've been on their own, that could be 18 months later. I've got somebody with 44 months, 45 months later, 25. I mean, we're anywhere from, what's our lowest number?

I think in eight months. Yeah, seven months is the lowest that we've got. So the range is seven up to 45 months of being on their own. And we're seeing in general, a 332 % increase. So going from two out of 10 to the average is seven out of 10, which is awesome.

That is really awesome, especially years later. OK, and then body image. So average body image on a scale from 1 to 10. Excuse me. 2 out of 10. Average now is 6.7. So we'll round it up to 7 out of 10. That doesn't surprise me that, I mean, that's still really good because 5 is neutral.

And 10 is I accept my body. So to be in between there is really, really cool. Body image is hard. Like, let's be honest, it's hard. And it continues to be hard for the rest of our lives as there's new trends and things coming up. I also wonder if that one's a typo there.

There was one or two that I caught where I reached out to the respondent and I was like, hey, it looks like the number you put for before is the same as after. Was that a mistake? And they were like, yeah, I didn't mean to put that. So there's that with some of these responses. So anyway, just throwing that out there because the averages sometimes can be messed up with responses like that. OK, now here's what I want to do is I want to focus on the people who finished all of the modules. Right now, what I'm looking at is

anybody who responded to this survey. That includes women who only completed a couple modules or a few of them. And there was even like one or two respondents that they mentioned at some point. did see this earlier. I can't find it right now. Something about like, I never really did the modules, I need to restart the program. that is like this data is including those respondents. So now let's go to those who finished all the modules.

away. OK.

our data for those who finished all modules. Average relationship with food before starting was two. The average after, if we're rounding up, 7.7, so rounding up eight, eight out of 10, which is amazing. Body image before starting average was two out of 10. Currently, now, present day is

7.5 out of 10. So about the same as we saw. OK, now let's go into how many times they were binging a week before starting. And now currently, we'll go back to all respondents. We've got an average of 3 and 1 times a week before starting, the high end being 15. And then we had some who have worked with me that weren't binging.

at all, the range of 0 to 15. And then, oh my gosh, this is so cool. The number of binge eating episodes a week now is 0.4, rounding down is 0, which is amazing. So let's say 0.5. That is for everybody that's gone through this process. If we go to those who finished all the modules,

The average number of binge eating episodes a week was 3.2, and it is now 0.2. That is just wild. That is a 92 % decrease in binge eating, which is something that, reason this lights me up so much is because the women we work with feel so discouraged and so hopeless, and they're never going to be able to stop. And then here they are, seven to 45 months later.

having been on their own for that long, for years, and they're still not binge eating anymore, which is so encouraging. I love it. It's so exciting. Okay, overeating. So this is non-binge overeating. So remember, some of this is normal and expected. I don't want to see necessarily like a zero, I'm overeating zero times a week because to me, that would tell me that we're probably being too intense and not allowing ourselves to enjoy life at all.

But at the same time, we don't want to see overeating happening like five to seven times a week or more. You know what I mean? So OK, before starting the program, non-binge overeating was an average of 5.7, rounding up to 6, with a range of 0 up to, I think, 20 is the highest I've got here, 20 times a week. And now, currently, we are down to an average of 1.8, so 2.

So down from six times a week down to two. So 30 % of what it used to be. Did I do that math right? My math people? Two, four, six.

Okay, so then for people who, yeah, it's a 63 % decrease. So for people who finished all the modules, we've got a average rating or an average ranking of not ranking, whatever, you know what I'm trying to say, 6.2 times a week of overeating, non binge overeating happening a week down to 1.5.

68 % decrease. So there's a slight increase in these numbers for those who finished all the modules. I'm interested, let me see for those who finished most modules. So they didn't finish all of them, but they finished most of them. Let's see how these things change. Relationship with food from a two up to a 7.4. That's expected. All right, that's pretty much the same. Body image a two up to a seven.

Binge eating, 3.5 down to 0.3 times a week, 91 % decrease. Non-binge overeating was 5.9, so six times a week down to 1.6, so two times a week. So it's about the same. About the same. Okay. Amazing. This is so exciting. I love this. Yay. We actually are doing good things around here.

You just never know. was like, I really believe in what I'm doing. And we follow really evidence based methods. And there's a lot of support available to our clients. But you just never know if you hear back from them. And they're like, this sucks. I'm doing terrible. I'm actually doing worse than before I started working with you. Okay, so this is fun. Now we're going to do some qualitative responses. As I said, there's 43 responses here. I'm not going to read through all of these, but I'm just going to randomly pick some and see what they said.

Okay, so let's see. This is from someone who has been on their own for 14 months, a little over a year. And they were someone who is now binge eating zero times a week, overeating once a week, super normal, I would even argue that's healthy. Okay, physical health changes they've noticed they've noticed they have become strong versus weight loss and scale victory. So they're focused on focusing more on strength goals.

and they are becoming stronger, which is cool. Key takeaways from the program, realizing how much trauma was related to my story, quote unquote story of my body, what it's been through and endured and done and what stories I was taught about food and my body growing up. Have you felt like you've been able to apply what you learned in everyday life? Yes, I've applied learning fullness cues. What is something that you are proud of accomplishing as a result of Nourished and Free? They said proud of learning and

Proud of the learning and exercise engagement and really digging deep on group sessions. Love that. ⁓ What is something that you feel, the question was, what is something that you felt like would have been impossible before starting Nourished and Free? And this person said, I wear a two-piece swimsuit. I embrace stretch marks, muscle growth, and feeling, fueling versus depriving. That's awesome.

I think I've got time for two more. Then I've got to hop into a team meeting. OK, let's do, this one is from someone who's been on their own for 45 months. So that's 12, 16, 24, 36.

almost four years, right? Almost four years. Okay, they had so their relationship with food went from a two now they say it's an eight out of 10. Their body image was a two now they say it's a nine out of 10. So that's cool. binge eating was five times a week before now, even four years later, zero times a week. overeating was five times a week. Now two times a week.

And then let's see, physical health changes. My weight was boomeranging. And after finishing Nourished and Free, I lost about 20 pounds and never regained it. Holy cow. That's understandable if they were binge eating five times a week and now zero. This is like the thing about taking a weight neutral approach is that it helps you actually really address the behaviors that were contributing to weight gain if you have excessive weight.

on you, not everybody does who struggles with binge eating, by the way, and our perception of what we think is excess weight is usually like, our threshold is a lot lower than it really is clinically. So anyway, when we actually address the behaviors that are contributing to that excess weight gain, then, and when we do it without this pressure of weight and stepping on the scale every day, it's really cool to see how

Okay, we actually address that behavior. Now we were able to lose weight and never regain it, which is really, really cool. Okay, key takeaways. Food is a moral. So not there is no moral compass associated to food anymore. Think about your feelings and deal with them rather than eating them. Love that. Okay, have you been able to apply what you learned? Yes, I don't judge myself for putting processed food in my shopping basket. But also I try to think about how food will make me feel and choose something according to that. I love that.

So good. What is something that you're proud of accomplishing as a result of Nourished and Free? Super proud that I jumped off the weight loss roller coaster. While my weight slightly fluctuates like everyone else these days, I no longer deal with losing and then gaining it back and more, and then losing and then gaining. So cool. Okay, anything that they thought would be impossible before starting that they now experience.

This respondent said, yes, cookies go stale, ice cream gets frostbite. There are days I realize I don't want dessert and I'm happy to pass on it. Amazing. So, so cool. Okay, let me pick one more. Let's do someone that's been about two years. Okay, so it's been about two years since this person's been on their own. They went from a two to an eight in their relationship with food.

a two to a nine in their body image. This was somebody who was not experiencing binge eating. So they put binge eating as a zero for before they started and currently, but they were non binge overeating. So they were overeating four times a week and now zero times a week. Let's see what physical health changes have they noticed. This respondent said I started a fitness program and lost weight healthily. Something that I really love about our process is that we want to help our

clients create a healthy relationship with fitness as well. Not only should you have a healthy relationship with food and your body, but also exercise. It should be something that you enjoy and that you do out of a desire to care for yourself, not something that you do to punish yourself or meet some ridiculous standard. So that's, I love when I see that my clients are engaging in fitness and exercise in a healthy way.

and then they have healthy body composition changes too that when we do it in this way, it's sustainable. Okay, heat takeaways, any aha moments. Definitely refer back to the healthy relationship with food statements. I can have this whenever I want. Also, biggest win was accepting my body at its heaviest so I don't feel a fear of weight gain at a lower, more comfortable weight.

That's really cool. Not only did they lose weight healthily, but now they don't fear if they were to gain it. That's incredible, actually, because I could go on and on about this. But when we fear weight gain, it can actually set us up for going right back into that cycle, because now we've got all these negative feelings, and we want relief from those negative feelings. So maybe we turn to food. I could go on and on, but I won't.

Knowing I prefer to be at this weight but don't need to be. That's so cool. Okay. Have you been able to apply what you learned? Yes. Balance your relationship with fun foods and healthy foods. What is something that you're proud of accomplishing? Definitely improved body image and ways to navigate changes in my body without severe anxiety. What is something that felt impossible? I am less anxious about food choices and trying to eat the perfect diet. I am more interested in sustainability.

And then all the rest of that is more for us. So love it. OK, this is so encouraging. I'll share more on my feed about specific stories and specific things that I want to pull out and highlight. But I just want to say, if you're a client of mine and you filled this out, thank you so much for doing this. It is incredibly helpful to me and my business. As a health care professional, I want to see this data. I want to be sure what we're doing is really working.

and the overwhelming response is that it is and we're having a what was it a 92 % decrease in binge eating and a let's see 400 % increase in relationship with food and a 400 % increase in relationship advice. So relationship with food is increasing by four times. Really body image is increasing by four times as well. So cool. So so cool.

Not gonna lie, this really brought life to me and made me super excited about my five year anniversary today of Yates Nutrition and made me feel like, okay, wow, it's all been worth it. So thank you to everybody that filled this out. And if you haven't, and you'd still like to give me your information or your data, I would really appreciate it. You should have it in your email, but let me know if you need me to resend it. And then ⁓ yes, for

anybody who supported my business, whether you've been a client of mine or not, seriously, thank you so much. I mean, being a small business owner is no joke. especially while having three kids at home, it's been quite the journey. So thank you, everybody, for all of your support. And ⁓ if you're looking for help with your relationship with food and with body image and you're ready to be a part of the success that Nourished and Free brings.

Send me message, let's chat, and I'm happy to see if this is good fit for you. Okay, I gotta go. I got a meeting with my team. Thank you, everybody. Hope you're having a good day.